AIDS, drugs and history

Abstract This paper analyses the relationship of history to two current and inter‐related policy issues, AIDS and drugs. AIDS, in particular in its early years, was a disease surrounded by history; and historians and others actively brought the ‘lesson of history’ into the public debates. Cholera and the Black Death provided historical examples of reactions to past epidemic disease; and the record of voluntarism in Britain in the area of sexually transmitted diseases was used to justify a non‐punitive response to AIDS. As the perception of AIDS has changed from epidemic to chronic disease, as reactions to the disease have become ‘normalized’, so the type of historical input has also altered. The lesson of history' approach has appeared less relevant, or has changed focus to encompass chronic—TB, multiple sclerosis—rather than epidemic disease. The concept of AIDS itself as an historic event, of the ‘contemporary history’ of AIDS has also come to the fore. The paper contrasts the relationship of AIDS and history with the ahistorical reaction to the particular impact of AIDS on drug policy. The policy reaction to illicit drugs has been historically conscious, in particular in the 1960's. But little of this historical perspective filtered into the reaction to AIDS on drug policy. Drugs, unlike AIDS, was not an open policy arena. The paper argues that overall drug policy objectives were already clear and it suited no policy interest to call on the historical record. The achievement of established policy objectives was better achieved by an emphasis on the newness of development, a response to potentially epidemic and unusual circumstances.